Barely three weeks since the last of these summary blogs (or newsletters if that’s how you’re reading this) but this feels like a sensible point to gather together links to all the posts published since then as – and I’m sure you can probably work this out from the title – I’ve now got to the end of all the write-ups from last year’s wonderful cruise aboard Ambassador Ambience up into the Arctic Circle.
We reached the northernmost point of our cruise at Alta, spending around 36 hours in total there, and in the first post from our time docked at the town we headed off on an excursion to the Igloo Hotel. No, we didn’t go and stare at huskies’ backsides while being pulled in sleds like everyone else seems to do. No, it’s not an industrial freezer masquerading as a quirky bar. This was one of those places that’s built every year from ice blocks and has artists in to carve designs for rooms. Just beautiful, and we saw reindeer too.
We continued our first day in Alta with a look around the Northern Lights Cathedral followed by a night-time excursion to see the Northern Lights. Spoiler: there were no Northern Lights. But we loved the experience of sitting out in the snow near fjord waters and fires for several hours and we’d definitely do that again.
Our sailaway from Alta the following day passed by some of the most incredibly gorgeous landscapes we’ve ever seen. Norway knows how to do landscapes, and under blue skies the snow just glistened with a heavenly chill. In that same post there are details of our speciality dining at Saffron on Ambassador Ambience and, to make up for the night before, a sighting of the Northern Lights from the ship instead.
A short post comes next as we enjoy a relaxing day at sea on Ambience.
Although it wasn’t supposed to be, Leknes on the Lofoten Islands ended up being our final Norwegian port of call on this cruise. Weather caused a cancellation of the next day’s planned stop and also shortened our time ashore here so this was a case of us getting dropped off in town then walking through the cold, drizzly landscape back to port. Some gorgeous views still to be had.
The cancelled Norwegian port in order to get us ahead of the weather front gave us two sea days on Ambience before our final port of call in the UK, and I took advantage of this to wander around the ship for some photos as well as catching an ice carving demonstration and getting more sights of the Northern Lights after dark.
There was some traffic accident excitement just getting to Crathes Castle and gardens on the tour we took when we arrived at Aberdeen in Scotland for what was the final stop on this cruise itinerary.
And to finish off the cruise just a few photos from the final sea day and arrival at London Tilbury along the Thames, including some useful information for anyone who thinks they can ignore instructions about disembarkation times.
If you haven’t read the complete series of travelogues regarding this cruise into the Arctic Circle on Ambassador Ambience then don’t worry because there’s not a court of law in the world that would hold you accountable for that action, but if you are interested and would like to see a map of the places covered as well then you can find all the posts here: Cruise – Ambience 2025.
The next set of cruise write-ups will start appearing on the site soon and those will be from the week-long trip down to France and Spain we had on MSC Virtuosa in July last year. We had low expectations of that cruise following the awful weekender that had been our only prior experience with this line and ship, but it turned out to be utterly different and absolutely wonderful. Next year we’ll be on a sister ship in the fleet, Meraviglia, for two weeks.
I should get a few of those posts from the new cruise travelogues series published before we head off on our next cruise which leaves Southampton on Halloween for a fortnight in the Canaries, but the next of these blog/newsletter-style posts will be the post-cruise thoughts about that Canary Island experience as that’s the way I do things in these parts. One thing we still don’t know about that cruise is what’s going to happen on the 11th November. At the moment, the itinerary has us docking in A Coruña (which we were looking forward to as it’s lovely there) but we know that Spain is staging a national strike on that day. Even if there are enough port workers to allow us to dock that won’t mean that there will be anything open. P&O have been quiet on this despite a number of people who are going on the cruise mentioning that they’ve sent emails to ask about it. If I were a betting man then I’d guess they’ll pretend it’s a big surprise to them and just announce the port cancellation when we’re aboard, then let everyone claim on their travel insurance for a missed port. I’d much rather that they gave us an alternative such as Lisbon or Porto as they’re on the way back otherwise we’re going to be finishing with four sea days. But we’ll still be on a cruise, so it won’t be all bad. Anyway, we shall see what happens.